5 Ab Exercises You Can Do At Work

Fitness starts with a solid core. Just ask Bicycle magazine's Selene Yeager. The "Fit Chick" columnist is an American Council on Exercise certified trainer, the author of "Ride Your Way Lean," and incredibly active by most standards. However, like many of us, Yeager also spends considerable time behind a desk. And it's there, working on the computer or talking on the phone with clients and colleagues that we fall into a serious fitness trap: inertia.

"We now spend a full eight hours a day sitting, and that's not good," Yeager said [source: Yeager]. "There's a big body of science developing, and it's kind of depressing, called 'inactivity physiology.'

"That's a huge problem right now. A lot of people think that, in itself, is what's causing so much of the obesity, health and metabolic problems we have," she said. "Say, you go to the gym in the morning, and run for 30 minutes, and then you sit for nine hours. That one burst of activity doesn't undo the damage of such a prolonged stretch of being sedentary."

Avoiding inactivity is especially important for your core. If you sit up straight in your chair, with your feet flat on the floor, you're more likely to engage your abdominal muscles. But if you slouch -- and let your skeletal system support your body weight -- you can go the entire workday without firing up your metabolism. Here are five great ways to get a quick core workout while at work.